patrick.net

EastCoastBubbleBoy says

In short - lets all ignore the trolls!

I agree. If I see a discussion becoming like a confabulation between a Gang of Brazilian She Males, I tend not comment.
(No disrespect to Brazilian She Males)

Call it Crazy says

commercial investors picking up the low hanging fruit of the foreclosures to use as rentals. They are just trying to grab the "deals"...

I heard lots of Canadians fell for it.

Call it Crazy says

That's not a "normal" rebound or recovery

Now,the question is what will happen when ROI starts going negative.

This market is crazy. I think it's a lot of micro-bubbles left, with most of the fly over states back to pre-bubble prices.

But the amount of distressed property is still staggering, and bubbles always overshoot on the way down.

Being a homebuyer right now is like trying to jump over a pool of sharks, thank you banking cartel.

E-man says

Kidding aside, you're known for being analytical, a straight shooter, and an over-thinker. LOL!!!

That describes quite a few of us around here. As a buddy of mine once told me, I’m susceptible to “paralysis by analysis”.

E-man I think your spot on. Recovery in housing is uneven. We tend to forget that even the bubble was uneven... I'd have to check the data, but my recollection is that a swath of middle America was spared the types of increases in price we saw along the coast. Parts of Texas as well... but they seem to learned from the property bubble they had back in the 90's when the oil industry tanked.

(Can anyone from that area back me up on that one... I don't follow that area all that closely)

That's right it is uneven. Some microclimates, it is probably not even about real estate.

The Fortress is not in a real estate bubble. It is more about politics half a world away, and the values that a different culture imports to here. As China Unravels, the stampede of elites outta there will surge. Coming from a culture where the gaokao is a make or break oneshot deal, they use the API as a proxy for that religion.

It's about politics in Communist Dictatorship, and it's about deep rooted values of Standardized Tests for a particular alien culture.

It's not about real estate. So it's not a real estate bubble.

Hunter, when Japan's economy unwound in the late 1980's, it did so in a (presently) democratic society (thank you very much, Greatest Generation), in a culture that reveres cohesion and is hardwired to reflexively fall in line.

I think an unraveling in China will probably look a lot different than the deflation of the Japan Bubble, and so likely Shanghai house prices won't be the first thing on the elites' minds when it happens.

Kinda like, Tehran house prices probably weren't the first thing on the minds of the Iranian elites who made their way to L.A. when Iran Unraveled. A difference between then and now is, there's a whole lot more of elites in Communist China now than there were in Tehran in 1979.

Troll Hunter says

That's nice history but the truth is prices are falling and have a long way to fall.

Yes they are and yes they do. But not in The Fortress.

B.A.C.A.H. says

But not in The Fortress.

Yes, the fortress is still in the bubble territory. Other areas have already deflated, but the fortress will stay overpriced forever. Prices in the fortress will keep rising, even after no one on the planet would afford to live there.

As a non-Bay Area type... where exactly is The Fortress? Alcatraz? ;)

EastCoastBubbleBoy says

where exactly is The Fortress?

It is the puddle of the Frog that lives in and hence the Fortress. :)

East Coaster,

A person who used to post here called himself "OO" lived in West Cupertino, an expensive neighborhood in the west county that is coveted by wealthy immigrants.

OO called the swath of neighborhoods from the southwest corner of the county (maybe like around Los Gatos / Monte Sereno) on up the Peninsula (except, of course, East P.A.) as "The Fortress", a bulwark against falling prices of neighborhoods, comprised of school districts with Super High Standardized Test Scores achieved by Super High Achieving children of Tiger Parents, and also some super wealthy neighborhoods further up the Peninsula. In California we refer to the schools' performance on those tests as "API" (academic performance index).

API was supposed to be an assessment of the principal and administration of the schools, for the education system and to be used by the education system, to identify places for improvement, and identify places that "worked" that for other educators, could be learned from. The public education system/bureaucracy still looks at API for that.

But another phenomenon also happened. Wealthy immigrants from certain cultures come from places where performance on a Standardized Test is a make or break one-shot deal, GaoKao. It is hardly surprising that they have imported their values with themselves. Tiger Parents are gonna make darn sure that their kids do whatever it takes to get all those high scores and also straight A's. It is not at all unusual for parents to give teachers flak if the kid got an "A-minus" instead of an "A" or "A+". Nor is it unusual for some of those high schools to graduate many valedictorians, all tied for the highest theoretical GPA with 4 years of straight A pluses.

This API frenzy has become a positive feedback loop onto itself. Realtor®s market homes in The Fortress based on the API score of the neighborhood school, and even though the reason for the scores is the Tiger Parents and nose to grindstone ethic of their kids, administrators and many teachers are quick to take full credit for the high API's.

As you go up the Peninsula, the high API neighborhoods of sh*tbox homes and McMansions sort of meld into the true elite real bedroom communities where CEO's, etc live closer to S.F like Atherton, Woodside, Hillsborough, etc., then right past SF into southern Marin like Mill Valley. There are also some pockets of neighborhoods like that in Santa Clara County like Monte Sereno, Los Altos Hills.

That's The Fortress in these parts.

Since the Bay Area is just another big urban area on the Left Coast, there's probably analogous neighborhoods in other big urban areas along the Coast like Vancouver, L.A. where wealthy immigrants from across the pond will also like to relocate to, they are non-Bay Area parts of The Fortress.

In earlier versions of his website some years ago Patrick shared his frustration with the Realtor®s and circumstances of shopping for a place in the Bay Area but I think he limited his search to neighborhoods inside of The Fortress. Rather than drink the Cool-Aid Patrick instead chose to be a renter in The Fortress, and to make this website.